[quote][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil][b]Warning: Unqualified Unsolicited Health Advice[/b][/url][/quote]
Hope is yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. There's literally over 17,000 platformers on Steam, almost all of them are complete amateur garbage, yet this one is still one of the worst of them all. A truly incredible achievement. But there's more, and it's worse.
The developer makes absolutely unqualified claims that he's able to treat psychological issues and provide mental health guidance through this garbage platformer with mandatory "die and retry" mechanics.
Trying to address serious issues such as mental and emotional health through the medium of video games is misguided and can be harmful. While it's plausible to suggest the intention was noble, this can do more harm than good.
The "developer" here is not a professional in areas of mental health and social problems, and when they use video games to pretend they are, this is not only utterly ineffective, it can be harmful.
It's my opinion that it's improper to use video games to address mental health issues. Apart from the harm such hamfisted attempts at addressing social problems can cause, this offers zero benefit to PC gamers.
People suffering from health issues or other social problems should seek out professional help rather than going to crap shovelware video games attempting to get attention/fame by exploiting such problems for their own benefit, as is the case here.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. If you take this as a game and not the snake oil health advice the "developer" is peddling for $4 a pop.
The graphics here are some of the worst, laziest attempt at video game "art" I've ever seen. It's hard to suggest this game even has graphics. It's just untextured, basic pixel blocks and blobs, the kind that an infant child might be able to create in 5 minutes on MS Paint. It's clear the developer didn't even try to produce any real graphics for the game and just phoned it in. It's unclear why such a lazy approach was taken, whether it may be caused by lack of talent, budget, or motivation to do their job properly. It also doesn't matter... what matters is that this has resulted in a game with zero visual appeal for gamers. It's an immediate failure on that measure alone.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the Construct 2/Construct 3 game engine/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset sometimes used by amateur developers as it doesn't require advanced game development skills, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities (it's worse than GameMaker Studio!). Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine.
The very poor quality of this game puts it squarely on-par with ancient 1990's Flash/Java games, and given it's 2025 (and this was released not so far back in 2023), gamers and the industry expect and deserve better than this kind of low effort shovelware.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 110,000+ games on Steam?
Hope has the total ripoff price of around $4 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam.
For comparison, the $4 asking price for this game could get you games like "Hellblade: Sensua's Sacrifice", "Metro Last Light" or "Middle Earth - Shadow of War". No pixelcrap is worth $4. If developers want to get paid the same kind of money as real game developers who know how to do graphics properly, they need to learn how to do graphics properly.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]
[quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says:
[quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote]
The developers appalling and alarming response is a cause for concern. The developer, while claiming that my review is factually inaccurate, then goes on to contradict himself with this troubling (and spurious) claim:
[quote] For many players, it serves as a reminder that they're not alone in their journeys, and we've received countless reports that the game genuinely helped them in some way to cope with their own struggles, which shows us that our intention to foster connection and offer a moment of reflection worked.[/quote]
This is exactly the same kind of utter bullcrap that the people who sell crystals to people with cancer to use as a substitute for chemotherapy repeat like a mantra. "You don't need radiotherapy, you need my healing quarts, it works!!!!"
It's quite sickening, but the developer response 100% confirms and validates the warning here... the developer deliberately made this garbage to attempt to provide mental health advice from someone who is perhaps the least qualified in the world to do so.
My warning stands, reinforced by the confirmation from this disgusting snake oil peddler.
Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this harmful game to anyone.
